By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

With little space left to theoretical digressions, the work, synthesis ofthe author's thorough and unfinished research project, addressesstudents, teachers, more specifically scholars in translation studies,more in general linguists, adopting a non-technical, common sense formatand a highly restrictive approach. The focus is on the way sentences areprocessed to achieve a felicitous translation into the target language,when restructuring a sentence in the source language. The Key to obtainthe above result is argumented and tested, through a consistent amount ofexamples. The overall framework is delineated through one default Maximof Translation, one text type, one register and one pair of languages,which confers cohesion to the study.

The area investigated involves issues, perspectives and contributionsfrom past and recent works, in translation studies as well as incontrastive linguistics, text linguistics, pragmatics, cognitive science,psycholinguistics. The relationships between language systems and use areexamined to emphasize how the former influences the latter, whendetecting and reframing, or reformulating, a sentence informationstructure and content. Related but typologically alternative, German andEnglish are the two languages whose prototypical cases of translationwith similar information structures are taken into account.

The restructuring patterns, chosen as the most frequently recurring, aredisplayed in the form of sets of paraphrases throughout the six centralchapters, two by two in connection with a linguistic theme andinterdipendent at different degrees: order, within and beyond thesentence; perspective, or the projection of semantic roles onto syntacticfunctions; explicitness, or the use of overt linguistic structures versusimplications or implicatures. The Contents details on each chapterconstituting paragraphs: Questions of order (21-38); Complex sentences(39-57); In favour of primary relations (58-80); Structural weight(81-102); Grammaticalized clues (103-120); Shifting boundaries (121-136).The discussion in the eighth - Relativizing optimality (137-159) -concentrates on a set of samples taken from judicial text type and manyliterary ones, which is functional to the enquiry thoroughness.Linguistic means, previously used to optimize processing conditions inoriginal and translation, are here demonstrated to be flouting them,because they are subject to other principles, stylistically characterizedby the nature and extent of deviations from the norm (see Grice, 1975).The cases exhibited prove the limits of translatability, whenredistributing information does not compensate for the differencesbetween source and target language. The ninth and final chapter -Reviewing the scene (160-164) - reviews the main passages and reflects onthe premises, stated in the Preface and the opening chapter, Setting thescene (1-20), to clarify both the basic concepts underlying the study andthe consistency of the results obtained. A very useful and appropriatelyorganized conclusive Glossary (165-179), subtitled Technical Terms seenthrough the Keyhole, adds to the concreteness of the text style andcontent.

Instead of a historical perspective (see Toury, 1995), the present workreflects a generative and context-oriented view of translation, as a setof possible correspondances between languages, and of each translatedtext, as a contextualized instance of those possibilities. Detailedempirical evidence supports the hypothesis the `optimal' translation, interms of language processing in discourse, in a context- and co-textdependent activity, as to its `textual relevance'.

Ascending the tightrope towards the original comprehension,interpretation and transfer into another language, the limitations to theuser's knowledge of the world or model of the situation evoked by alinguistic expression find a compensation. Languages rather differ inwhat they must express (see Jakobson, 1959), or `prefer' to express.Given the language, some expressions simply meet its specificrequirements. This is the domain of contrastive linguistics. Contextualproperties pertain to how languages `prefer' to convey a message. This isthe domain of translation studies, dealing with the correspondancesbetween languages or relations typical of translations.

Relations are to be searched for to establish or create correspondances.They include sometimes insourmontable differences, concentrating onmeaning and style and originating from languages properties andproductivity, from their systems and use. To overcome them implies totake side, due to the implicitly or explicitly emerging dominance ofeither the source or the target language. In this view, a translator mayretain or create, stay closer to either the meaning or the style of theoriginal. The `default' norm of equivalence is part of the TranslationMaxim the Key proposes. Optimal relevance, resembling Toury's `optimalequivalence' (Toury, 1983), is achieved when, the closer a translation isto the meaning and style of the original, the more equivalent originaland translation are, within the constraints of the target language, intribute to which deviations are `licensed'. The hypothesis presumes thatquality assessment is possible, in contrast with Baker (1992).

The Principle of Optimal Relevance lies on "the greatest possiblecognitive gains for the least expenditure of effort" (Carston, 1988:59),a purpose to be cooperatively pursued by each participant to an act ofcommunication (see Sperber and Wilson, 1986). Cognitive gains aremeasured against the effects of confirmation, extension or rejection onthe user's knowledge, beliefs or assumptions about the world. Processingefforts range between absolute novelty of and familiarity with thesentence information. Words, context and co-text help shift from theformer towards the latter, when processing the message linguistic form.It combines and encodes grammatical properties, semantic andcontextualized meaning, with a linguistic and an extralinguistic part,related to a mostly implicit linguistic knowledge and to the knowledgeabout the relevant world and principles of inference. The linguisticforms an original message can be embedded into in the target language aremultiple. The user's sentence processing can be hampered or facilitated.By adequately analysing the sentence information structure in the sourcelanguage and by appropriately reconstructing a relatively effortlesslyaccessible set of `information units' in the target language, to someextent predictable, the translator enables the `wrapping up' andintegration of the processing results into the acquired contextualknowledge.

To enforce the ability of predicting the optimal linguistic form in thetarget language, the author suggests a method based on sets of minimallyvaried paraphrases of the original structure, which appeals to the user'simplicit knowledge about the appropriateness of paraphrases relative toeach other in a certain context. The procedure of comparative assessmentis not invalidated by the acknowledged other possible more optimalparaphrases. It directly involves the processing conditions, contextdependent and language specific, aspects interacting in the way theinformation is distributed onto the original and translation linguisticstructure.

The cases examined in the six central chapters show that there aresystematic options available to the translator, in reason of a languagevocabulary and grammar. The different use of them is here claimed to beprimarily due to a sort of `mould', formed by a small set of basicgrammatical properties and helping diversely shape similar material. Theexamples in English and German appear to envision the parametersdetermining it in a given language. If verbal extension is to the rightin English, to the left in German, if the word order is rigid in theformer and more flexible in the latter, deviations are related either tolimited and well-known situations, as the yes-no questions, or to theintegration of a sentence into its discourse. This depends upon universalrules of information structuring. Language-users adopt them in view to afelicitous communication. Appropriateness thus concerns the words and thesentence structure chosen among those available to most efficientlytransmit a message. The choice falls within the boundaries of languagespecific discourse-linking strategies. They differ in English and German,due to the different grammatical systems and properties.

The sets of examples analysed lead to continually and progressively:confirm or change objectives and aims; test and verify solutions andoptions on how to achieve them; revise or reformulate the initialassumptions and state new ones, in the light of the results obtained.They enforce the comparative procedure adopted and emphasize itsdynamics. In particular, the cases from two special languages in theeighth chapter shift into the foreground deviations, leaving the DefaultMaxim of Translation in the background. They are proved to be bothembedded into the same framework.

All together, examples allow to verify that differences betweenreciprocally related optimal translations occur in regular ways,explainable through processing conditions. Two grammatical parametersunderlie them, namely directionality and configurationality. They inferprocessing ease in identifying the focus is the dominant and unifyingaspect. Preconditions for focus interpretation appear to be parsing andanaphora resolution. Among the possible sentence foci, the syntacticallydetermined neutral verb-adjacent position is assumed to be the main andprototypical one, in the end-focus German and the surprisingly mid-focusEnglish (see Quirk et al., 1985). The focus is entailed to have differentpositions within the sentence, due to the two languages oppositedirectionality.

In a semantic-pragmatic perspective, structural and contextual focus maynot appropriately match, due to the parameters of left- andright-peripheral phrases, when sentence-internal interpretation isassumed to follow from the sentence-external context. Shown to carry overfrom simple to complex sentence, as well as beyond sentence boundaries,to sequences of sentences, parametrized processing difficulties urge foranalogous version restructuring to comply with the Maxim of Translation.Garden paths are thus avoided, even by focus separation, when more thanone is present in one sentence. With the aim to achieve grammaticalacceptability and optimize discourse appropriateness in the targetlanguage, different solutions, requiring further investigation, areenvisioned and prospected in the central chapters. In detail, whentopicalized or scrambled in the source language, material is eitherpresented in its basic position or extended by a dummy structure, throughclefts, with a view to end-focus or focus separation in English (2-3;5-6). Verbs are turned into the active form and initial adverbialsreframed as subjects, to secure neutral focus interpretation or focusseparation (4). Sentence boundaries are re-set, when structurereordering, reframing or extending/reducing do not provide focusidentification (7).

Two interrelated lines of research are pointed out. Through adiscourse-based analysis of information structure, the first identifiessentence contextual foci and their relevance, both reciprocal and relatedto sentence-external context. The second identifies both thelanguage-specific means to formally indicate foci, and the constraintslimiting the use of the above means or determining the acceptability oftheir substitutes.

Many questions arise, with reference to the linguistic andpsycholinguistic assumptions needed for predictive generalizations of theindividual analyses. Restricting the attention to one discourse function,for instance, is here justified because informing is a most basicfunction and common to a wide range of texts. Identifying its primarystrategies and language-specific conditions is maintained as the key to awide variety of frequently occurring phenomena. This should enforce thepredictive potential of generalizations. Findings thus achieved should inthe end somehow extend to other issues and benefit other disciplines. Theauthor actually claims that translations are basically not different fromother `impure' data of language use, which provide a valid empiricalbasis in linguistic or cognate sciences. That given, the issue ofinformation structure in source and target language is definitely to beconsidered central to translation studies and to be more deservedlystudied. The conclusive hypothesis is that, assuming the distribution ofinformation is controlled by basic principles involved in language use,and its optimization is framed by language typological properties, theanalysis of the conditions determining it could contribute to shed lighton intuitive strategies of language use, at work in felicitoustranslations or stylistic encoding.

Critical evaluation

The study, framed into an ongoing research project, departs from thetraditional historical perspective of translation, along with the beliefthat translation studies are to open to contributions from otherdisciplines. This occurs in the context of a mutual exchange, as they areclaimed to be possibly benefiting from the results of the investigation.

What really matters to the author is to stimulate students and scholarsin translation studies, clarifying the field and object they are supposedor willing to enquire into. Given its width, the field is examinedthrough a restrictive approach. Given its vagueness, the object isexamined by adopting a strict norm. Results are not definitive, theprocedure to obtain them is concrete, recognizable and effective.

The other emerging aspect is the productivity of the approach delineated,estensible to the study of language use, in part still largely unknown,even to more scientifically based and oriented linguistic disciplines.

The richness and vivacity of the author's honestly and firmly assertedpositions and perspective are only sketched through the above words, totestify their acknowledgement and the appreciation of her entire work.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
ABOUT THE REVIEWER Giampaolo Poletto is a student in Foreign Languages and Literature, English and Russian, and Humanities in Italy, with teaching qualifications for secondary schools in English and in Italian. Having taught in Italy and abroad for ten years, in universitarian institutes as well, Giampaolo Poletto is actually second year student of a PhD program in Applied Linguistics at the University of Pécs, in Hungary, with a research project on pragmatic and psycholinguistic aspects of humor, in relation to processes of second language acquisition, focusing on Italian humorous written texts, of both verbal and narrative humor, in the contemporary literary and non-literary production, to be analysed and processed in a semantic-oragmatic and psycholinguistic perspective, to then reflect on processes of implicit language learning, and, with reference to curricula of second language teaching, propose didactic applications, eventually multimedial for IL2 students from 11 to 18. ˆ